Suit accusing SF State of anti-Semitism is dismissed

Updated 5:44 pm, Friday, March 9, 2018

Photo: Tsafrir Abayov, Associated Press

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Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat speaks during an interview with The Associated Press in Jerusalem, Tuesday, Feb. 27, 2018. Barkat said Tuesday that he was working with a third party to resolve a tax dispute with major Christian denominations that has led to the closure of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, one of Christianity's holiest sites, just ahead of the busy Easter season. Later Tuesday, the mayor suspended plans to collect taxes from churches. (AP Photo/Tsafrir Abayov) less

Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat speaks during an interview with The Associated Press in Jerusalem, Tuesday, Feb. 27, 2018. Barkat said Tuesday that he was working with a third party to resolve a tax dispute with ... more

Photo: Tsafrir Abayov, Associated Press

Suit accusing SF State of anti-Semitism is dismissed

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A lawsuit accusing San Francisco State University officials of tolerating and encouraging hostility toward Jews on campus was dismissed Friday by a federal judge, who said the plaintiffs had offered no evidence that administrators showed religious hostility in incidents like the disruption of a speech by Jerusalem’s mayor.

But U.S. District Judge William Orrick III in San Francisco said he would consider letting the case proceed if the plaintiffs, a group of Jewish students and their supporters, filed a more convincing case within 20 days.

The suit, filed in June, claimed the university had “fostered and sanctioned anti-Semitism from the highest levels.”

The plaintiffs said anti-Semitic name-calling, graffiti and other slurs on campus over several decades made Jewish students “feel fearful, intimidated and threatened.” The suit focused on two incidents: the exclusion of the Jewish group Hillel from a campus “Know Your Rights” fair in February 2017, and a shortened speech by Jerusalem Mayor Nir Birkat in April 2016.

Warned of protests against Birkat, an ally of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, school officials moved his talk away from the center of campus. Six minutes into the speech, about 20 students stood and shouted, “Israel is an apartheid state,” and other chants, then took a microphone and effectively silenced Birkat, according to a report commissioned by the university.

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The suit accused the university of discriminating by choosing a remote location and by allegedly ordering campus police not to arrest or halt the protesters. But Orrick said Friday that the lawsuit failed even to allege that school officials were motivated by the content of Birkat’s speech or “the views and religious beliefs of the attendees or organizers.”

There were no allegations that the school shunted Jewish speakers to far corners of the campus while treating controversial non-Jewish speakers differently, Orrick said. And he said the failure of administrators “to handle the protesters in plaintiffs’ preferred way ... for one event” did not prove they discriminated against Jews.

Orrick said student organizers, not school administrators, had denied Hillel a permit for the “Know Your Rights” fair. The organizers said Hillel had missed a registration deadline and that another Jewish group had participated in the fair.

Even if school officials bore some responsibility for the two incidents, Orrick said, that didn’t show that Jewish students “suffered such severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive discrimination” as to create a “hostile environment” forbidden by civil rights laws.

But Orrick said the plaintiffs have claimed violations of important rights and are entitled to another chance to make their case. His willingness to consider a revised lawsuit was treated as a victory by the Lawfare Project, a pro-Israel legal organization representing the plaintiffs.

Lawrence Hill, the group’s chairman, said the amended suit would demonstrate how the plaintiffs, “like many other Jewish students at SFSU, have faced systematic violations of their civil and constitutional rights.”

Zoha Khalili, an attorney for Palestine Legal, which supports Palestinian advocates on campus, said it was now “clear that this lawsuit is a meritless effort to intimidate and distract advocates for Palestinian rights.”